Cyrillic Partners

A group of journalists/tech consultants has set up a site soliciting ideas to save the classified advertisement section that used to be a mainstay of print revenue.

This idea seems DOA to my mind though. Why would anyone with a good idea actually throw it away by sharing it? So far, the “experts” have come up with ideas insufficient to resurrect a decade-dead advertising medium. It all feels very “well sonny, back in my day…”

It’s a well meaning effort though, with some interesting tidbits on the design and evolution of classifieds, but it’s like trying to bandage a wounded leg just as newspapers are going into cardiac arrest.

Wikipedia offers some interesting stats on the business of classifieds:

In 2003, the market for classified ads in the United States was $15.9 billion (newspapers), $14.1 billion (online) according to market researcher Classified Intelligence. The worldwide market for classified ads in 2003 was estimated at over $100 billion. Perhaps due to a lack of reporting solidarity Market Statistics vary concerning the total market for internet classified ads. The Kelsey Research Group lists online classified ads as being worth $13.3 billion, while Jupiter Research provides a conservative appraisal of $2.6 billion (2005) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau lists the net worth of online classified revenue at $2.1 billion (April 2006).

Newspapers have continued their downward trend in classifieds revenue as internet classifieds grow. Classified advertising at some of the larger newspaper chains has dropped 14% to 20% in 2007 while traffic to classified sites has grown 23%.

A quick peek into the technologies of tomorrow from the staff at MIT suggest that some of the problems we deal with today may be solved, or at least mitigated substantially, over the next decade.

My favorite was the prediction that autism will be licked. It’s a health issue that affects 1 in every 150 American children and results in some $35 billion in lost productivity and health care costs each year. I hope its days are numbered.

See the entire list here.

I haven’t been a big fan of Dell computers since the company sold me one that has chronic overheating problems. My dad came to hate Dell after it jerked him around over a cable it never sent.

Now Dell is getting whacked by the NY Attorney General for “fraud, false advertising, and deceptive business practices.” My buddy Brian Caulfield has the story for Forbes.com. He also points out that Dell shares are off 11% for the year.

There’s some interesting stats here, but the real kicker is the percentage of news Americans consume that comes from a tiny, tiny portion of the media market. Scary.

New research out of Princeton shows that the poor suffer more pain than the rich. “People in households making less than $30,000 a year spend almost 20% of their time in moderate to severe pain, compared with less than 8% for those in households with income above $100,000 a year,” says economist Alan Krueger.

Another interesting finding was that people who experience pain watch more television than those who do not. People who hurt spend about 25% of their time watching TV while the non-afflicted spend only 16% of their time, according to the self-reported surveys used in the study.

The number of patents awarded to the top 200 research universities increased more than 45% from 1995 to 2005, but I’m not sure what to make of that. Are universities waking up to the potential for commercialization of their work? Are they changing the focus of their research? Are their tech transfer teams bulking up? Data from the U.S. Patent Office.

It’s illegal to sue the University of California for patent infringements because the school is protected under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.

I’ve been hearing how frustrating this can be from entrepreneurs who have dealt with the school first hand.

I’m no strict constructionist, but I have to agree with this assessment of the silly protection, excerpted from the WSJ:

Stanford Law School professor Mark Lemley: “The underlying problem is that the Supreme Court is applying an antiquated doctrine — the 11th Amendment — to circumstances in which it was never intended to apply,” he says. “The Framers never contemplated states suing people for patent infringement.”

The Venture Capital Journal is a finalist in the prestigious Maggie Awards for 2008, given out by the Western Publishing Association. Stories by Joanna Glasner and I were finalists in four categories.

The best part of the experience was traveling to Los Angeles to get the awards with Joanna and our editor, Larry Aragon. The presentation ceremony was a blast!